


Why Don’t We Paint the Town

by Carmarthen



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo, Some Like It Hot (1959), Van Aki Forrón Szereti (Színház)
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - 1920s, Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Prohibition Era, Amnesia, Crossover, Drinking, F/F, Flappers, Gen, Jazz Age, Pre-Femslash, Speakeasies, Unresolved Emotional Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-07
Updated: 2014-04-07
Packaged: 2018-01-18 12:06:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1427884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carmarthen/pseuds/Carmarthen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eponine is having a lousy night working the crowd at her usual speakeasy when in wanders a wide-eyed little rich girl, who promptly gets herself in a spot of trouble. Even the devil has to do a good deed sometimes. </p><p>(1920s Chicago AU/slight crossover with <i>Some Like It Hot</i>, but you don’t need to know the fandom.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Why Don’t We Paint the Town

**Author's Note:**

  * For [smokefall](https://archiveofourown.org/users/smokefall/gifts).



> I was going to write you something else, and then this ate my brain, but I ran out of time to take it past the vague UST zone or make it as long as it probably needed to be, sorry. :-( I, uh, hope you like flapper AUs.
> 
> This is a slight crossover with _Some Like It Hot_ , or more specifically, the musical based on it, _Sugar._ You don't really need to know canon, but those who have watched the Hungarian version might have some extra hilarious mental images.
> 
> Please note that some of the language and imagery here regarding race are pretty outdated and even problematic now, but I felt they made more sense for a 1920s woman than modern avoidance of such terms would. If I've messed up in that context, please let me know.
> 
> Thanks to Cinaed and drcalvin for swift last-minute betas, and I highly recommend everyone check out the wonderful [Atov](http://apfelstrudelz.tumblr.com)'s [gorgeous illustration](http://atovv.tumblr.com/post/82332603704/so-carmarthenfan-wrote-for-les-misers-exchange) if you like pretty 1920s ladies being adorable!

The jazz was hot, the liquor cold, and the draft up the slit in Eponine's skirt colder. God damn Spats Colombo for not latching his windows proper, though inside it was all crystal chandeliers (dusty, missing half the lights) and red plush (worn bald by countless fat asses with fatter wallets). Oh, his joint was the place for her. Eponine Thenardier in her fringed dress cast off from the dance hall where Azelma worked as a seamstress, with half the beads missing and the trim mismatched because who'd notice under stage lights—or in the dim smoky corners of a speakeasy. But that didn't mean she wasn't allowed to hate it.

She took a cigarette from her purse and waved at the nearest gent for a light, examining him with a coy and practiced eye as he bent to apply the match. "Thanks," she said to his blush, dismissing him with a curl of her lip. He wasn't worth her time; just some wet-behind-the-ears fish who looked like he didn't have jack to his name. Probably bought one 25-cent drink and stayed to gawk. Whoever let him in would get an earful if Spats found out.

She sucked in a mouthful of smoke, slow and careful, hollowing her cheeks and lowering her lashes as she scanned the room. It was a slow night. The last sap whose wallet she'd tried to lift had contrived to stumble his way into a roulette game, which had rapidly become a brawl. She'd managed to talk a few swells into buying the more expensive booze, the stuff Spats called Dewar's and Hiram Walker’s, even though it was West Virginia moonshine like the rest, but that had never been her best game, not like thieving. Even a drunk in the dark could see that she was too skinny, her eyes darkened with hunger as well as eyeshadow, her rouged lips stark as blood in her thin white face. It was dramatic, sure, but the kind that unnerved men instead of alluring them. She wasn't the kind of girl this sort of man would open their wallets for on the strength of a smile. She was the kind of girl one of Spats' toughs might tumble for a few dollars in the alley behind the funeral parlor when there wasn't anything better.

She didn't, of course—she had some pride left. Only Parnasso, sometimes, for a laugh, and if he bought her dinner afterwards, well, what of it? Sometimes a girl needed to feel like a lady for a few hours, even if she had to pretend a frog was a prince. Parnasso wasn't so bad, and it made her father happy. The old wolf had ambitions in Spats' gang, and while Eponine couldn't care less for his happiness, he was lighter with the back of his hand when he was in a sweet mood.

Eponine finished her cigarette and lit another. The music went on, piano tinkling and sax soaring over the chatter and clink of glasses, and under it all the low heartache thrum of the bass. But the talk changed, first a drop and then a rise, the sound of people beating their gums about a new arrival. She knew before she turned what it meant.

But it wasn't Spats she found herself staring at, but the colored girl with him: a pretty little brown lark of a bird, the hem of her dress flowing halfway down her calves and her dark hair pinned up—in braids, good Lord, like someone's granny—whatever was _she_ doing in this joint?

No, not _with_ him, not that wide-eyed innocent with her little girl's purse clutched in slender brown hands. She'd seen this theatrical before, some rich little debutante who'd wanted to play at being a flapper showing up without the password. Spats lurking near the door in his pinstriped suit, hair slicked back and smooth as oil, offering to help her out, clearly a man of importance in this joint. He wasn't so bad, for a girl who knew what she was about, but he'd ruin an innocent like this one.

It turned her stomach tonight, a sourness that mingled with hunger and the harsh burn of the gin she'd drunk earlier.

Even the devil had to do a good deed sometime.

She shimmied her way through the crowd up behind them, dropping an arm around the girl's shoulders. "Now, don't be taking any wooden nickels from this sheik, baby," she said, giving Spats her sweetest look, although she didn't expect it to do much good with him. She smiled, careful to keep her mouth shut so her fillings wouldn't show. "Mister Colombo, it ain't nice of you to play games with my sister."

"Your sister," he said, flat and unamused at the loss of his prey. He gestured somewhere in the vicinity of Eponine's shoulder. "I thought your sister was that mousy little thing what works down at—"

"My _other_ sister," Eponine said quickly, squeezing the girl's shoulder tighter. She was trembling, poor little lamb in the wolf's den. Pray God she had the sense to keep her pretty mouth shut. "Half-sister. We have different mothers."

"That's clear enough," said Spats, dry as grave-dirt. Of course he didn't believe her: they looked nothing alike. Where Eponine was white as a stiff without cosmetics to bring color to her lips and cheeks, her hair in its Eton bob straight as the road to Hell, this girl had the coffee and cream complexion of a mulatto, and her hair where it escaped those ridiculous braids curled and frizzed. And even if Eponine wouldn't be caught dead in that frock, it was quality: real silk, not rayon, made for her, not bought in a department store or secondhand shop. She felt a pang of jealousy, sharp and cold, but at least she wasn’t the one in danger of getting eaten here.

She held her breath, the girl quivering against her, until Spats smiled, his wide, toothy shark's smile, and laughed, genuine amusement this time. "Run along, then, and don't forget you owe me."

So he'd be taking more than his usual cut tonight, and there'd be no hot breakfast in the morning. Well, she was used to that.

"Come along, sister," she said, starting the girl to a dark corner with a hand in the small of her back. The silk of her dress was sleek and soft under her fingers, body-warm against the in-curve of her spine, and Eponine had to resist the urge to stroke, to enjoy the feel of such fineness. "Here, have a drink to calm your nerves," she said, snagging a jar from a passing waiter. They'd assume she was planning to roll the rich girl, and if she was lucky Spats wouldn't put it on her tab. Well, and if she did, wouldn't the girl be lucky all the same to be able to run home to daddy a little wiser but with no worse to show for it than an empty purse? She was doing her a favor.

The girl drank too deeply and coughed, pulling a face. "What is this?"

"Ain't you never tasted moonshine before, sweetheart? Juniper juice, gin, nectar of the gods."

"My father doesn't hold with drinking," she said, softly, which Eponine could have guessed, and then she smiled, a wry little twist of unexpected humor. "If it all tastes like that, I suppose I can see why."

"Paolo," Eponine said, waving over another waiter, "be a darling and fetch the lady a Brandy Alexander, would you?" She offered the girl a cigarette, to which she shook her head.

"Thank you," she said quietly. "Mister Colombo, he told the doorman to let me in, but then he was so…” She twisted her purse between her hands, clearly searching for a word. “...friendly and I didn't know how..." Lord, had she never been out in public before? Most society girls knew how to politely brush off a pushy gent before they had their coming out.

"You're lucky I saw you," Eponine said, handing her the drink Paolo has brought back. "There are worse wolves in this joint than Spats. _He_ at least likes to think himself a _gentleman,_ though he's no more a gentleman than I am a deb. Who's your daddy, then, some kind of bluenose?"

The girl shook her head, sending one curl springing loose to fall over her forehead. She was terribly pretty, in an almost artless, natural way: no blush in her cheeks but what nature lent her, her eyes wide and bright without artifice. Again that prick of envy, the eternal thorn in Eponine's side. "We just keep to ourselves, mostly. I'm Euphrasia Madeleine, daughter of—"

"Shhh!" Eponine pressed her fingers to Euphrasia's lips, glancing around to see if anyone has heard. "Don't say that name here, you little ninny! There's only one name Spats hates more, and he's a cop." What an innocent, waltzing into one of the most notorious speakeasies in Chicago and giving her real name like that!

Euphrasia’s smooth brow wrinkled faintly in puzzlement. "But why would he hate—"

“Try your drink,” Eponine said, quickly. The last thing the girl needed to do was start asking awkward questions in this place, especially when she obviously hadn’t recognized what Spats was. “I bet you’ll like it better than gin.”

She took a drink, cautious as a cat, her full lips pursing as she sipped, and then drank. "This is good.” A flash of pink tongue as she licked a drop of cream from her lips, strangely fascinated. She had stopped trembling and was gazing around the room in rapt fascination. "What did you call it again?"

"A Brandy Alexander. It's made with cognac and—well, that don't matter. Look, if you're going to stick around tonight you'd best stay with me, and we have to do something to make you look less—" Eponine waved a hand helplessly, at a loss for the right word. _Delicious,_ her traitorous mind supplied. _Edible._ "—lost."

"I don't even know your name."

"Jonquil," Eponine said, because she never told marks her real name, much less marks who were the daughter of Mister Madeleine, the richest and most mysterious Negro in Chicago. "Come on, let's go powder our noses."

* * *

Euphrasia still had that wide-eyed look in the powder room, which was really more like a closet, with a cracked mirror and half the bare lightbulbs burned out, nothing impressive at all. Spats was a cheapskate where he didn’t have to spend his ill-earned cash. Surely Mister Madeleine’s daughter had seen much nicer places than this; or perhaps it was the novelty of seediness that awed her. Eponine smiled to herself, a bit bitterly: once she’d been that girl in silk, the girl who had never known hunger or a harsh word, but that was a long time ago. If there was one thing she’d learned, it was that life wasn’t fair.

There wasn’t much to be done with Euphrasia’s hair without cutting it, unfortunately. “Here,” Eponine said, steering Euphrasia over to stand by the mirror. “I don’t suppose I have the right colors for you, but they’ll have to do. Close your eyes and hold still.”

She closed her eyes obediently and tilted her face up, long dark lashes fanned out across her cheeks, her full lips slightly parted. Sometimes Eponine did Azelma’s makeup for her, even though she was really too young for that kind of thing, but this wasn’t like helping her sister, not at all. She had to stop for a moment and take a breath while her hand steadied before lining Euphrasia’s eyes and sweeping the eyeshadow over her faintly fluttering lids. There was a bloom of pink in the girl’s cheeks that owed nothing to Eponine's compact by the time she was done, and Euphrasia was swaying ever so little. “That—brandy thingie sure was lovely,” she whispered when Eponine put a hand on her shoulder to steady her. “Tasted like chocolate.”

“Mmm,” Eponine said, “lipstick now.” It really was the wrong color, she decided, carefully lining a cupid’s bow on Euphrasia’s lips as best she could without a stencil. With her complexion, she really needed a deeper red, but it would do in the dark, for now. “There, you can open your eyes. Can you do your own blush?”

Euphrasia opened her eyes with a kind of artless coquetry that Eponine wasn’t sure whether to admire or envy. Not that she cared much to flirt for its own sake—men were pigs, for the most part—but it would be useful. “Oh,” she breathed, gazing at herself in shock. “I’m _beautiful._ ”

She had been beautiful before, Eponine was about to say, when to her shock, she found the girl’s slim soft arms flung around her neck, hair that smelled faintly of lavender— _lavender! what century was she from?_ —tickling her nose. “Oh, thank you, Jonquil! I’m so glad I met you.”

Eponine was not used to affection, much less affection granted so freely, with such exuberance. It made her skin prickle uncomfortably and her cheeks flush. When her limbs unfroze she disentangled Euphrasia and said, more brusquely than she meant, “Don’t get excited yet, doll, I’m not done with you.” She rooted around in her purse for the little pair of scissors she kept. “I hope you aren’t too attached to that frock.”

* * *

The last low note of the song rang out sweet and full through the chatter and clink of glasses. For a moment Eponine forgot the girl standing next to her in a dress with a ragged edge cut above her knee, her stockings rolled down, looking for all the world like she was about to be put before a firing squad. The jazz singer, a tall Negro woman with a rhinestone clip glittering in her waved bob, sang like it was easy—one note soaring into the next, voice smooth as melted chocolate, smoky as good whiskey, the kind of voice that could carry the listener away to somewhere softly lit and beautiful and warm. She wouldn’t be singing in gin joints forever, not her.

“Who’s she?”

Euphrasia’s soft question brought Eponine back to dingy reality, and she shrugged. “Dunno. Spats can never keep the good ones here long.” Too many raids, although somehow he always weaseled his way out of real charges—but there was no need to worry the girl about that.

The next number was some hot piano jazz with a bit of swing to it, a good strong beat that made Eponine tap her toe against the floor in time. Eponine pulled Euphrasia out on the dance floor. “I don’t suppose you know how to Charleston.”

Of course she didn’t, but Eponine had to allow she had a good sense of rhythm and learned quickly enough to follow a lead, even if she wobbled a little in the wake of her second drink. Her hand was warm and a little damp against Eponine’s bare shoulder, the dip of her spine smooth and silk-clad under Eponine’s palm. It wasn’t like dancing with Parnasso, who spent more time trying to admire himself in any nearby mirror than watching his feet, or like dancing with some drunken mark with wandering hands and eyes glued to her chest.

“Turn your feet more,” Eponine murmured, “in and out, in and out—there—and bend your knees a little. Pick up your feet! This ain’t a minuet. You’ve got nice knees, show them off. Kick up your heels.”

Euphrasia had stopped blushing some time back, and replaced it with giggling. It ought to have been irritating, but somehow—like everything about her—it was charming. Some girls had all the luck.

“Oops,” Euphrasia said, still giggling as she stumbled heavily against Eponine, her lips brushing against Eponine’s neck as she steadied herself. “Sorry, Jonquil.”

“‘S all right.” There was no way she could roll this girl, not this innocent who didn’t seem to want anything from Eponine but her friendship, this girl who held her hand like she didn’t notice the scars and ragged fingernails. “Let’s go sit down for a few and catch our breath.”

* * *

By the time the Prohibition agents showed up, Euphrasia and Eponine were both blotto, flushed and laughing arm-in-arm like they’d known each other for years over some joke neither could remember a minute later.

The music skittered to a ragged, dissonant halt as one of the windows shattered and a woman screamed. For an instant the crowd froze, holding its breath in shock, and then the entire room turned into a mad press of shouting men as agents bulled their way through the crowd, knocking glasses to the floor.

“Jonquil, what—?”

“It’s Javert,” Eponine said, standing on tip-toe to see over the crowd to the door, where a tall man with iron-gray hair and a grim look stood with his arms rigidly at his sides, a heavy stick tucked under one arm. “Must have tipped off the Feds. Any other cop in Chicago, I'd say he was aiming for superintendent, but I think he just can't stand the sight of folks having fun. We’ll go out through the funeral parlor. Quick, quick, before anyone’s dumb enough to throw a punch.”

The chilly air outside hit her like a blow, stealing the breath from her lungs so swiftly that for a minute or so she forgot to shiver. Well, at least it wasn’t winter.

Euphrasia began to laugh, a full, rich sound nothing like her earlier giggling, laughing until she grew breathless. If she weren’t leaning against Eponine she’d probably fall down, but at least she gave off a little warmth. “Oh,” she said at last, “I don’t think this is what Papa meant when he told me I should keep my mind open to new experiences.”

“What do you suppose he meant?”

Euphrasia waved a hand vaguely. “That I ought to eat more greens, I expect, or read something improving instead of romantic novels. Oh Lord, what time is it? I’d better get home!”

“Not alone at this hour,” Eponine said firmly, taking her arm. If this was going to be her good deed for the month, well, she’d do it right and see it all the way through. Behind them came the sharp retort of a gunshot, and Euphrasia jumped and grabbed Eponine’s arm with a surprisingly strong grip, her fingers digging painfully into the muscle. “But let’s not hang around this joint any longer. Javert’s got no qualms about arresting women, and you wouldn’t want to explain _that_ to your daddy, would you?”

* * *

Dawn had already broken by the time they reached the gate of Euphrasia’s home, a fantastical wisteria-covered cast-iron thing leading into a kind of mad overgrown garden that made Eponine think sharply of the hotel in New Orleans, surrounded by greenery that grew faster than the hired man could cut it back. She wasn’t sure if the tightness in her chest was longing or distaste. She’d been happy then, before her father had lost the hotel at cards and they’d had to flee ahead of the creditors, happy like only a stupid girl who didn’t know a damned thing about the world could be, but—

“Will you come in for breakfast?” Euphrasia had caught at her hand with cold fingers. Her arm was covered with gooseflesh, and she looked shockingly innocent for a girl with her stockings rolled down and her lips bright scarlet in the morning light.

“I don’t think Mister Madeleine would care for the likes of me in his fine house.”

“Oh, Papa always goes to early services on Sunday mornings while I sleep late,” Euphrasia said, tugging her towards the gate. “Please, no one’s even here. Madame Toussaint—she’s the housekeeper—it’s her day off. There’s rice from yesterday. I’ll fry us up some calas with cinnamon and nutmeg. I swear I’m not quite as useless as I look.”

Eponine wavered, almost able to taste the syrupy, creamy sweetness she could scarcely remember from girlhood. No one in Chicago made calas.

“Please, Jonquil, just come in for a few minutes. I’ve never had a friend before, except Papa. We're friends, aren't we?”

 _Friends,_ when she hadn’t even told Euphrasia her real name. Well, in the grand scheme of things Eponine had done to feel guilty about, that didn’t even signify. Maybe they could be friends. Maybe Eponine could have a friend, just one. “All right." Her smile turned real before she could stop it, and this time she didn’t flinch at all from Euphrasia’s embrace, or the soft lips pressed against her cheek. The scent of lavender had faded; Euphrasia smelled like sweat and booze and cheap lipstick, like the kind of women Eponine had always known. Familiar.

But the fluttering in her belly only grew as she walked through the wisteria-draped gate and into that jungle of a garden, towards the kind of big brick house Eponine had always watched from the street, imagining without believing that someday she’d live in one.

It was queer, how much this girl she’d only just met put her in mind of the past, of a life she tried not to think about. Something in the way she tilted her head, in her wide eyes and the way she had startled at every shadow after they left Spats’ place. Familiar, when it shouldn’t be.

It was likely just her mind playing tricks on her, envy and long habits of suspicion making her think there were mysterious depths where there was only clear water. She took a deep breath and followed Euphrasia inside.

At least she’d get a hot breakfast after all.

**Author's Note:**

> My "research" for this pretty much consisted of rewatching _Chicago_ , watching some makeup and Charleston tutorials on YouTube, and looking up some slang. If I've made any egregious errors, please let me know.
> 
> Race relations in Prohibition era Chicago in particular deserve a lot more research than I had time to do, and I'd especially appreciate corrections to those elements of the story.


End file.
